As for fit and function, vintage tops rock! Albeit size is something you should not pay attention because a Large is not a Large. The sequined skirt did not seem to be my typical flair for style, but I was glad to wear it because it really pulled the out fit together and gave the strong color of the blouse an anchor. I’m really excited to cheer on Julie and her clothes full of attitude. I have the hottest leather get-up that really ties in the “Glam Rocks” theme in Marion Square. Be sure to stop by the Style Lounge and meet the Cavortress herself!

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Caroline Millard has some inside scoop about this year’s Charleston Fasion Week. “There’s no calm before the storm” is a pretty bold statement since CFW in its festive spirit kicked off on Friday. Julie Wheat of Cavortress launched her 201o collection with Eye Level Art and  the [aloft hotel] in North Charleston.

Charleston City Paper gives there praise by invoking the spirit of Bettie Page.

Here’s a roundup photos after the walk through [aloft] by Sully Sullivan.

If you would like to learn more about Julie Wheat and how she advises aspiring designers to “have the guts to be you”, then  Shauna Heathman of Mackenzie Image has the scoop on being Cavortress.

My Charleston Fashion has provided a video from the event and behind the scenes.

So has All Over It. And earlier last week, All Over It put together this preview of Bellina in Cavortress prior to the launch.

Social media has impacted how we gather and view news worldwide, and media outlets continue to struggle with a way to combine social media with traditional journalism to find a model that works. We think our March Social Media Star, Ken Hawkins, has the solution: TheDigitel.

TheDigitel, founded by Ken in 2008, is currently based in Charleston, S.C., but headed to other cities soon. It’s a site that connects readers to news from local media outlets and also produces its own stories, while integrating social media tools like Facebook and Twitter in a helpful way. They’ve also created an innovative ad model integrating real time social media content from their advertisers.

TheDigitel, which recently secured funding for expansion, has its finger on the pulse of news in the 21st Century. We once heard Ken say that citizens will become the gatherers of news and the journalist’s new role will be to provide context. We think he’s right!

Ken wears many hats at TheDigitel.com, acting as Web master, information designer, owner and editor in chief. To keep the site up to date, he spends four or more hours a day on social media sites, monitoring news and events.

For the rest of this article, please visit http://www.stepaheadinc.com/2010/03/1565/.

I have to dote on my mother. She is the most resilient woman I know and well I’m blessed to have not fallen far from her tree, even though she may wish I was plucked off of it on some days. Anyways, she was invited to share her spring rolls with the Charleston Magazine audience. The rolls look great and well I can’t pass them up when she brings them home. Sometimes they make up my entire meal.

Scoot on over, stop by and say hi to mom at Pattaya Thai Restaurant \ 607-C Johnnie Dodds Blvd \ Mount Pleasant 29464. She’s been the first and only Thai restaurant east of the Cooper for the past 12 ish years. I tend to lose count, but let’s just say Thai was trendy on the show Friends around our opening. That’s going waayyy back.

She’s a good mama.

The state is gearing up for a bonfire at Birchwood Farms in Reevesville. We are so happy to welcome our peers from Columbia + Greenville, and areas in between, to join us on Saturday from 3:00pm – 9:00pm.

For almost five months now, Charleston has been tweeting up consistently and has exceeded my wildest expectations. It started when I moved back home and felt out of place because, although I grew up here, I didn’t have a professional network or attend college in Charleston. With the help of Kristin Bostic (@ChasRunner), we invited strangers and friends to meet-up and engage one another. On Saturday, we hope to make our world a little smaller and include those tech-savvy individuals across the state to move & shake with us.

I’ve put together some directions with landmarks, so you don’t feel so lost or deceived by your GPS. Some of the streets change names before you can notice:

From Charleston & Columbia:

-Get on I-95 South (to Savannah)

-Take exit 77 (to 78 East), Jim Belton Blvd

-Off the ramp, turn right and it will go down to 2 lanes (and change names, just keep straight)

-Take a left on Main St/Co Rd S-18-383, this will be the left before the Town Hall + Fire Department.

-Take a slight right over the railroad tracks on Reeves St/Co Rd S-18-18

-Keep straight for 2.1 miles Reeves St will turn into Heaton Rd

-You’ll take a left at the stop sign at Independent School Rd, for .8 mi

-1146 Independent School Rd is on the right with the white taped off fencing.

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With 1-2 events a month, we have turned this town upside down. I have found new friends and connections right in front of my face, but in the most unconventional threads of similarities. I would never have figured out that @KennethAndrews was such an art junkie with similar taste in indie music, or that @BrianCrawford was ripping electronic tracks on the side & that we were familiar with the same DJs, or that @MelMatho would be the most motivating person to get me involved in Charleston, or that @JaredWSmith would be my tech guru and a common staple in my Barcamp/social networking/#CHScowork lifestyle.

Without Twitter, these conversations may not have developed and interests would not be discovered. But that is true in life and in relationships. You don’t network with someone and expect to know them immediately. Cognitive dissonance evaporates over time and people reveal themselves in unique situations.

I created this video for the www.charleston.twestival.com site. I figured, Charleston needed a way to relate to Twestival since many businesses seem hesitant to get involved with Twitter. It’s really funny how uncommonly un-mainstream Twitter is in the Lowcountry and that organizations are unsure if they want to be associated with it.

It humors me that having concern and awareness for others strikes cognitive dissonance. I may be communicating in a different way, but the message remains clear. Twestival is here to umbrella cities + communities on the same day for the same awareness and energy to be exerted on March 25th, worldwide. No, we don’t spend the time tweeting when we’re in-person. Twitter is an introduction and a handshake into conversation that can flow from an online space to an offline environment. Twestival is the comforting hug for children around the world in the poorest nations.

Let it spread into your heart, your home, and your soul. Take it away, Avett Brothers!

Click here to view the embedded video.

However, “The cost of convenience is being expensed at the price of integrity.” (Christina Lor, quote me, seriously.)

I am frustrated, as a consumer, to find that organizations exist on Twitter <via Facebook>. Whyyyyy?

1. You aren’t engaging your stakeholders.
2. Your FB status is longer than a tweet, so you’re message or link gets cut off.
3. different platforms = different strategies = different publics. Plus, the language is different = bad translation

Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu, of Purdue University, said,

“Even personal undiscriminated cross-posting across Twitter & Fb is a bad idea.”

She wrote a post, in November, that alluded to ‘total chaos’ from the deconstruction of our ‘relational selves’.

Our relational selves (being different around different groups of people) develop, as she describes, a social intelligence. We create reference groups to identify with and become significant or insignificant compared to other reference groups. Dr. V develops a view on the meaning of messages as the context dependency within a reference group.

As a consumer, I use Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook differently because I have a range of reference groups and friends that identify with each tool. We communicate in our own context-dependent language and have a different calendar of events. For those that have difficulty relating to social media, it may be the friends you invite to dinner from high school, the ladies you meet up with for a book club or Junior League, and the friends you tailgate with on Saturdays. You may feel like you could not entertain them at once, but tend to include them when there is a common thread of interest or persons of interest.

As a public relations practitioner, I communicate differently with unique messages when engaging with Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook. Linkedin would not be approriate for the use of abbreviations or hashtags. I want to see what kind of testimonials you’re receiving, who you know, and what experience you have under your belt. Facebook would not sync well with Twitter because you may exceed your character limitations, which render your links as broken and thoughts incomplete. This is a failure. Plus, you cannot keep track of the communication coming in using one platform. You should be checking them all periodically.

I see these social media “experts, mavens, enthusiasts, et cetera” leading workshops and, referencing technology in communications, on television and they make me cringe. Cringe because they are telling people how to fail for free. They all sing the praises of syncing your platforms of communication to broadcast simultaneously, but then you would be neglecting the context of your reference groups and failing your stakeholders.

Why would “experts, mavens, enthusiasts, blah blah blah” encourage you to create fallacy on your integrity and make you look bad? And why would you hire them for that?

Here’s some free advice: Don’t ever sync across the board. If you can’t afford the retainer, pay for the consultation, identify your reference groups and honor your patrons. If you’re above the consultation, then please respond to those that take the time to leave you a message.

Well, as these words came out of me I didn’t think twice about them…

After running my hands in the reflection of those words, I realize I can say that because it’s the story of my life. Some days it feels like I’ve become detached from the sentiment, but I look around and see that I am and you are — in it. You have to reconnect and recharge. Looking in the mirror, that’s not the story of one’s life, it’s the transition into the next chapter and it reminds me that the story is ongoing.

This is a chapter of my life.

You should really know Meggie, she radiates a brilliance around her and is a contributing editor to QuarterLife Magazine.

She identified us, in her eyes, as women-on-the-verge, career-driven, in-charge of our burgeoning growth, and under 30. I struggled to prepare answers to some of her questions. Some days I feel like I don’t fit that description. Granted, I have very firm views, but what would I hope to impart on someone in college. That I didn’t know at the time, until today.

Ever since I was 7, and I got my first American Girl doll and books, I wanted to emulate Samantha. One thing I will always remember is this phrase, “Action Speak Louder Than Words”. Then, these words formed together in my head and tickled out from under my finger tips…

If there are lessons to be learned:

resilience is a challenge;

humility, the largest pill to swallow

and grace is a gift.

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Today was one of those days that was loud. It wasn’t loud around me, it was loud inside of me. I let my list start talking to me over and over again. Thank goodness Kelly Cutrone was tweeting about her new book, “If You Have To Cry, Go Outside!”. I’m sure for those who are familiar with Kelly Cutrone, friendly may not be the first word that comes to mind, but I LOVE HER!

She is definitely a strong woman with an inner voice. Amidst the very loud + fast-paced fashion PR enigma that People’s Revolution has become, Cutrone single-handedly gave me the slap across the face that I needed. After reading excerpts from her book, I was rejuvenated to keep the faith*.

Here are the high points that I have gathered:

“Gather your courage like an armful of free clothes at a McQueen sample sale & follow your inner voice where ever it takes you.”

“Sometimes, if not most times, you find out who you are by figuring out who & what you are not.”

“If this book inspires you to do one thing, I hope it’s to take years when you’re young and go balls out on tuition…”

Today, as a Gen-Y entrepreneur, I lost my inner voice. But then I found someone else’s voice, it is my friend Miah who is out-of-town, IN MOROCCO, and he said this to me. Mmmyea, I’m going to make you click that link over there to see what he said, however, it did remind me that I was on a journey or quest, as he put it. I am traveling with an intuition visa in the entrepreneurial badlands and my inner voice as the travel agent.

So, I stepped out of range from the loud within to pen this postcard from my journey.

The island of Kaua'i in '08.

Aloha from 2008. Your days of chasing the sun are numbered.

Princeville on the North Shore

Let the sun find you. Set your own orbit,

pursue your own path. Quiet the noise and listen to you.

*One time in DC, my friend and I were on the metro and the engineer overshot the track. To diffuse the panic he talked to us and said things like, “keep the faith.”

flickr user chrys (@exposur3)

Yesterday was my first experience in the co-work environment. It was a much smaller group compared to the door-busting crowd that welcomed the movement to the Lowcountry last week. I’m glad it was not too overwhelming because I became better acquainted with my peers and could embrace exactly where the co-working movement was headed. I left Rehava abuzz with so many new million-dollar ideas in my head and with so much electricity to want to do more.

If you are unfamiliar with the co-working concept, then these principles come to mind:

• collaborative community
• sustaining a local economy
• accessible + efficient

Co-working is the best alternative for freelancers, sole proprietors, creatives, and ingenues to be immersed in a homogenous think tank for mobilization. I would happily contribute to keeping this alive with some of the sharpest minds in the Lowcountry than pay rent to work alone. For Ergonomix, co-working enables me to cultivate ideas in a hotbed of my peers + potentially stakeholders. I am able to sharpen my thought process and bounce it off of a different wavelength.

Yesterday, I joined a podcast led by Sean McCambridge of Chucktown Deals. He hosted a round table with Jared Smith, Mike Close, Kenneth Andrews, Steve deGuzman, Chrys Rynerson, and myself. It has been interesting to see how co-work emerged from BarCampCHS and become something like a weekly CHStweetup for this burgeoning “creative class”. If you’ve never read Who’s Your City? by Richard Florida, run to get it, now! (Not just because he RTed me + Ken Hawkins that one day.)

Here’s how I see it…Not-for-profit co-work v. for-profit incubators reinvests interests back into the community. Many of us feel that providing a home for co-work is expense enough. Rehava has been generous enough to share their workspace with the co-work crowd while the City of North Charleston embraces and prepares for a more static home in Park Circle. This is the ultimate gesture of community, not just for our creative class, but toward a sustainable, and inclusive, business culture. The collaboration with Rehava can only enhance the appeal of the Lowcountry as creatives become attracted to our fair Lowcountry and hope to surge our saturated real estate market. To really appreciate this beyond la vie boheme you should read Richard Florida’s books!

For more insight on how co-work got started and what it means to us, spare us 20 minutes, it has posted to Chucktown Deals: